large groups able to force opponents off map in Cyrodiil. (Due to server message rate limit maybe?)

doabhi

@ZOS_GinaBruno There's no other way to explain this, but something in the core game has to change. Large groups of players are able to literally gain a tactical advantage by balling up in large numbers and spamming skills, forcing opponents around them to basically drop back to lobby.
Exhibit A <- This happens Consistently and a large number of players seemed to suffer the same fate around 16:40, 16 September 2022 GMT In Greyhost on PC NA today.

doabhi

Correction: 16:40 GMT not EST.

doabhi

this is an ongoing problem!

doabhi

WHY IS THIS NOT BEING LOOKED IN TO!? The Game Still Kicks you i you try to do anything with a certain number of people around!

Holycannoli

It's a big problem. Any large fight with a ball group on Grey Host PC-NA and you're liable to lose connection.

kargen27

The problem for me occurs almost always after I have sprinted on my mount a long distance to get to a large battle. Could be me misremembering or forgetting some but it seems often to be when the outer wall is breached when I arrive that I have problems with disconnect.

doabhi

It does not seem connected to sprinting for me, I went to the scroll temple on AD Side as DC were about to take it, you know to do my bit and throw down some heals - DIsconnected. log back in, everyones moving slow motion, 10 seconds later, disconnected. Log back in, I'm dead, 5 second, disconnected. log back in, 5 seconds, Disconnects. try one last time, still dead, scrolls gone, nobody around, limp back to gate i guess. It's infuriating as hell.

Adernath

It looks like your graphical settings are too high. Try starting your way up from minimal settings to see if that improves the situation.

doabhi

Adernath wrote: »

It looks like your graphical settings are too high. Try starting your way up from minimal settings to see if that improves the situation.

not graphical, settings are on potato and i'm using FSR, framerate is relativly decent, By slow motion i should probably clarify they were crawling and across the area real slow and rubberbanding,

Edit: the best way to describe it is like watching slowmoguys footage. The frame rate itself is within normal ranges, the on screen action such as walking/running animations are all playing slowly and everyone's walking in slow motion or standing still in freeze frame like a still life art exhibit.. but particle effects are unaffected of course. so someones orb rolling across the screen might freeze in place but the effect around it still renders normally.

Ping however in these situations jumps from the 'Normal' (by eso standards) to being above 300 or "999+" before it kicks you off. I suspect this is server side problems.

for the record, i'm on 1Gb Cable internet, so it's not like i'm out in the stix on a dusty old DSL line from 1998

kargen27

Hasn't happened to me for a while now. Last couple of times it did happen I would find myself back near where I started rather than at the keep where the battle was. Also a few times I would get to the fight but would be the only one moving. A reloadui would disconnect me so I could join again. Usually quite a ways back from the keep.
So at least in my case I'm thinking the area isn't loading as I travel through it and that causes the problem for me. Not sure if slowing down would help. Gotta rush to the battle so I can become a nice looking corpse!

p00tx

That used to happen to me on Xbox when the keeps or gates would change appearance due to taking dmg or being repaired during prime time. It would mass DC everyone pretty reliably, every time. Also the onset of weather, like snow, rain or fog in Cyrodil would cause massive lag and FPS drops, making hard to even move.

Amottica

Adernath wrote: »

It looks like your graphical settings are too high. Try starting your way up from minimal settings to see if that improves the situation.

Or something else local. They lost connection to the server, which is why the game still considered them logged in. That is not even kicking the player back to the lobby. The rubberbanding often occurs when there is an issue with the client connection to the server, which can be located anywhere from the PC/console to game servers and potentially hundreds of points in between.

If it were due to a large number of players actively fighting at a keep, something that has happened for years and used to be in more significant numbers, then many, it not most, of the players at that location would have been kicked out before the OP even arrived. It would be more like what @p00tx described.

Rowjoh

you haven't said the most important aspect which is what platform this happened on.

If it was PC EU for example then this is par for the course as the 'big fix' isn't happening until March next year...

doabhi

PC NA. i asked in zone and it has been happening to others too.

Jamie_Aubrey

Certain DC players can make me crash to desktop and I don't mean players running in ball groups, I can go up against 3-4 balls in the same place but its those DC that are in a 2 man group

Jaraal

doabhi wrote: »

PC NA. i asked in zone and it has been happening to others too.

Yeah local connection issues can be ruled out. There have been many times that I have been kicked and it has happened to others at the same time.

It’s usually when either ball groups or the hammer, or both are nearby.

zaria

Amottica wrote: »

Adernath wrote: »

It looks like your graphical settings are too high. Try starting your way up from minimal settings to see if that improves the situation.

Or something else local. They lost connection to the server, which is why the game still considered them logged in. That is not even kicking the player back to the lobby. The rubberbanding often occurs when there is an issue with the client connection to the server, which can be located anywhere from the PC/console to game servers and potentially hundreds of points in between.

If it were due to a large number of players actively fighting at a keep, something that has happened for years and used to be in more significant numbers, then many, it not most, of the players at that location would have been kicked out before the OP even arrived. It would be more like what @p00tx described.

This, the issue is the client or it would affect everybody, not saying the servers are fine but they are much better than some years ago, it might be hardware or software fixes.
One quick way to check your settings is to join an Alkir dolmen zerg at primetime, if you have have low fps here you will get problems in Cyrodil during large fights.

FluffWit

Theyve made a lot of efforts to nerf ball groups, most of them have simply made them stronger. Because they're better at taking advantage of new sets and combat tweaks then the rest of us.

Doesn't really bother me- you just learn not to get farmed by them. i.e to go fight someplace they're not.

deejayvee

The few times it has happened to me, it's always been when I am arriving at a keep that is under attack. Usually it's when entering through a wall breech, but not always.

doabhi

Dolman groups i'm usually okay doing, i farmed that just yesterday actually and it was a fairly eventless grind. FPS was on average between 40-80 which is normal, it'd sometimes dip below that but that's always been the case for me. In the years i've been playing ESO on the same rig though this issue of being booted to character selection or "An error occured" followed by "your account is already logged in" is something that's only been happening with consistency in the last couple of patches, and despite the variability involved it's very reproducible.

In cyrodiil i see an average ping of 180 to 220 which given my distance from the server isn't unexpected (Though higher than my actual ICMP ping to the server IP which is closer to 120) That shoots up to 300-800 if more than 40 people are around me though, but my frame rate doesn't suffer too horribly and stays above 30, the game however begins to suffer greatly as if it's waiting for data but not receiving any.

given that the game uses UDP and not TCP, the data stream for events is susceptible to packet loss, so sadly this is to be expected, however it's only recently been such a prevalent issue that it causes the client to return to login screen with an unhanded error state message.

Thus my OP of "Something in the core game code needs to change" Either fix the underlying issue at hand that's causing the potato performance, or better code the client to handle these cases where desync becomes too great due to missing events from the data stream (E.g ditch data that is too old instead of trying to display it and only display the most recent frames) it might increase the rubberbanding a little, but that can only be fixed by re-thinking the core infrastructure the servers are actually hosted on. I'd take a bit of rubberbanding over being booted to lobby every 2 minutes.

Jammy420

This has been an issue since years now. I believe it got worse with the " performance update " a few years back. I have honestly avoided Cyrodiil like the plague because of it. Add to that the maras balm issue that is sorta better, and cyro is essentially not playable atm.

The upgrades to the server hardware are the only solution to EUs general problems, and this game needs a cheat detection system years ago.

Holycannoli

Amottica wrote: »

If it were due to a large number of players actively fighting at a keep, something that has happened for years and used to be in more significant numbers, then many, it not most, of the players at that location would have been kicked out before the OP even arrived. It would be more like what @p00tx described.

That happens a lot too. All of a sudden many people are gone and they all start trickling back a minute or two later complaining they lost connection. This is preceded by crazy high ping spikes in the red.

Lebkuchen

When they accidentally fixed the performance issues on PC NA with the server update, everyone was so happy. I have not heard any good news since then

doabhi

still happening today with large DC Ballgroups taking full advantage of it. nobody can defend the keeps because they're being booted all the damn time. absolute waste of time and money this game is turning out to be.

I have checked everything on my end. I've disabled all addons, i've turned everything in graphics off and to low. My FPS remains stable, yet the game stammers and stutters about with lag and eventual kicks to login screen, i'm about at my wits end with this and i'm forced to be left feeling like the studio behind it just wants my money and really wants to make full use of that 'offers no guarantee of service' clause in their TOS. (Yes i did read it)

Zyva

People need to distinguish what they mean by "ballgroup". To me, a ballgroup is a coordinated group of 12 in voice coms.

Zergs, however, is multiple groups, not always IN a group, and usually not in voice comms (anywhere from 20-40 people usually), and just group together for ease of pvp. And Faction stacking, is when the majority of a faction descend into one area, Usually to defend a key keep, take a scroll/ stomp on Hammer.

From my experience, it is almost ALWAYS when the hammer is in play and factions stack, that people crash. There wont even be ball groups there, and people start crashing. You try to run to a keep where there is a faction stack fight, and you will pass other people standing still mid-stride who crashed trying to get there. Or you will try to port to a keep about to be flagged by multiple zergs, and you will crash on port.

It is not just when its enemies, either. If your own faction is zerging or stacking, you can crash. Let alone when two factions worth of stacking/zerging is happening and fighting each other.

I would not be surprised at all if siege also plays a factor. When a keep has a dozen of three factions worth of siege, or max siege from two factions.

One thing I can say for certain, is I have never crashed in an open field, even when three ball groups were present.

Paralyse

While it is amazing to see large groups going at it - 40v40 etc - the lag is ridiculous.

I have a pretty stout gaming PC (Ryzen 7 5800x, 3060ti 8gb, 64gb DDR4 3800, 2tb ssd) and no problem usually 150-200fps even in Cyro but when Hammer, Scroll, Emp, or large zergs are on me, especially in super high pop campaigns like Gray Host, even I get down to like 10fps and the interface lag (time between you hitting a skill and it actually firing) is nuts. As someone who is mostly a PvP healer, it's frustrating being stuck there watching people die and then your heals finally start hitting like 5-10 seconds later, by which time you're already dead to a delayed prox bomber or to plaguebreak procs, or boneyard/harmony, etc. Forget about any kind of DPS, it's just not going to happen.

One thought that I had was if ZOS could build some sort of logic into the game to automatically reduce particle and sound effects on screen scaling with the number of players present within range of each other, that might help somewhat. I think the game's engine and servers simply cannot handle trying to deal with sound and graphics for 80-100 players on screen at once, all spamming their abilities, and proc sets going off all around that.

Oakenaxe

Constant crashing seems to be returning now. Performance got a little better in the recent past but seems to be worsening once again. I know it gets worse when there are bigger fights/bigger groups, but we can't blame ball groups for this (they lag and crash too). This is not players's fault, this is a performance problem.

Jaraal

Oakenaxe wrote: »

Constant crashing seems to be returning now. Performance got a little better in the recent past but seems to be worsening once again. I know it gets worse when there are bigger fights/bigger groups, but we can't blame ball groups for this (they lag and crash too). This is not players's fault, this is a performance problem.

Likely related to the constant calculations necessary for the new sets: Nocturnal's Ploy and Mara's Balm. Also, consider that with most players running Oakensoul in Cyro that that's now 17 buffs per player to have to calculate, whereas the vast majority who don't run it (or everybody before it was introduced) never have 17 separate buffs active at one time. Now consider the big announcement they made about the performance improvement of nerfing the little used Prismatic Onslaught glyph from having to check for undead and daedra on each proc, and you can see how it's a problem.

OBJnoob

Actually I would think oakensoul makes for less calculations not more. Its not like you can't get these buffs elsewhere. Having them constantly is probably simpler than having them for 20 seconds and then having to recast.

Jaraal

OBJnoob wrote: »

Actually I would think oakensoul makes for less calculations not more. Its not like you can't get these buffs elsewhere. Having them constantly is probably simpler than having them for 20 seconds and then having to recast.

Recasting a skill is one calculation. But having to calculate 17 different modifiers per tick of incoming and outgoing damage and healing is a lot of calculations. And I guarantee you nobody in Cyro that doesn't run Oakensoul has 17 different buffs on them at once, unless they are in an organized group.

Adernath

doabhi wrote: »

Adernath wrote: »

It looks like your graphical settings are too high. Try starting your way up from minimal settings to see if that improves the situation.

not graphical, settings are on potato and i'm using FSR, framerate is relativly decent, By slow motion i should probably clarify they were crawling and across the area real slow and rubberbanding,

Ping however in these situations jumps from the 'Normal' (by eso standards) to being above 300 or "999+" before it kicks you off. I suspect this is server side problems.

for the record, i'm on 1Gb Cable internet, so it's not like i'm out in the stix on a dusty old DSL line from 1998

In the past I had many dc-s I ran on an older PC with low memory. That sort of problem almost vanished with a hardware upgrade from my side. However I still experience lag spikes during prime time. My dc-s nowadays come mostly when I try to port to a very contested keep.

My personal guess is that the server start kicking those people on PCs which can't keep up. But honestly I don't know the precise reason either, sorry. Just guessing.